


shepherd to the wolf said this a home, our home

by eneiryu



Series: out in the fields, out in the valley with you [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25925185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: “You figured out whose it is, yet?” Stiles asks, because Stiles is an asshole.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken/Hayden Romero
Series: out in the fields, out in the valley with you [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706014
Comments: 40
Kudos: 68





	shepherd to the wolf said this a home, our home

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be completely honest, I don't totally know what this is. The basic idea of this fic had been floating around my head for a while (since I wrote the first fic of this series, really), but this was _not_ the fic I expected to work on today. But hey! I go where the winds of inspiration blow, or something.

“Look, there’s no point in you being in here right _now_ ,” Hayden points out from the middle of her hospital bed, the nurses and doctor and Ms. McCall all swarming around her like well-choreographed insects. Even under the shapeless hospital gown the curve of her belly is prominent. “Why don’t you both go like, grab a cup of shitty cafeteria coffee and come back closer to the main event.”

“Hey, don’t knock our shitty cafeteria coffee,” Ms. McCall absently defends, at the same time that Theo retorts, “But how will we know when the main event _is?_ ”

“I’ll howl,” Hayden replies dryly, possibly in jest but possibly not, and then she looks away from Theo to widen her eyes directly at Liam in a clear instruction. _Get him out of here,_ that looks says. _Maybe get him a paper bag to breathe into,_ it means. Liam might be editorializing that last part but he doesn’t actually think he’s that far off.

Rolling his eyes, Liam gets a hold of Theo’s wrist and starts pulling him away.

Theo resists, at first, and then he stops resisting so suddenly that Liam actually stumbles. Luckily he stumbles _into_ the door into Hayden’s room, and so he just keeps going with the momentum and hip-checks the handle open, and pushes through it. His and Hayden’s miscalculation, though: the rest of the pack is in the waiting room down the hallway. Their heads all pop up like meerkats, misinterpreting Liam’s and Theo’s reappearance.

“Stand down,” Liam orders, his hand tightening on Theo’s wrist because Theo starts to dig his heels in like a spooked horse at the sudden attention. “Baby’s still in transit, not yet delivered.”

Reactions to his phrasing are mixed: Lydia rolls her eyes, her perfectly-manicured fingers threaded through Derek’s, while Mason and Corey and Malia all grin, or laugh. Derek’s lips just quirk, silent and amused, but he also has one heel tapping on the floor in a constant rhythm. _I’d start working on your cardio. Supernatural kids have supernatural energy reserves,_ he’d warned the day that Hayden and Liam and Theo had told everyone, but for all that he’d sounded dry and very Derek-like, underneath it he’d also sounded _wistful._

_We’re going to get so much free babysitting out of him,_ Liam had commented drunkenly that night with his face buried in the front of Hayden’s shoulder, still a little feverish with his excitement and his terror and his general feeling of _what-the-hell-are-we-doing_. Tucked up close on Hayden’s other side, Theo hadn’t said a word, just pressed his face up to the back of Hayden’s neck and slid his hand over her still-flat belly. 

The same hand that Liam has a hold of now, thankfully, because he strongly suspects that Theo might just take off, otherwise. He tugs a little harder on it specifically for the way that it makes Theo stagger into him. He doesn’t let go even once Theo has.

Purposefully or benignly oblivious to all this, Scott asks, very seriously: “Do you two need anything? Does Hayden?” He’d tried sitting when they’d all first arrived, Liam breathless on the phone as he’d called everyone saying _it’s time!_ , but he’s got too much energy, apparently; he’s been up on his feet since then with Malia watching him bemusedly from another one of the seats. “If any of you need anything, we can—”

“We’re good,” Liam interrupts, grinning at him. “We’re under orders to go get some shitty cafeteria coffee, actually.” This time it’s _Liam_ who widens his eyes at _Scott,_ and then jerks his head slightly over his own shoulder, towards where Theo is still hovering there like some kind of close-mouthed animatron. Scott’s eyes widen in turn.

But before he can say anything—possibly something helpful or true alpha inspired, and possibly something much more nervous just-Scott-McCall-like—Stiles drapes himself over both Derek’s and Lydia’s laps so that he can eye Liam and Theo beseechingly as he says, “Okay, but like, seriously. The suspense is killing me. _Tell me_ you’ve figured out whose—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish. Scott, whose nervous wanderings Liam now concludes had been karmically-driven, had ended up close enough to Stiles when he’d paused in his circuits of the waiting room that he’s able to quickly raise one heel, and stomp it down on the arch of Stiles’ foot. Stiles _yowls,_ successfully cutting off his question, and curls up like a pill bug in the lumpy hospital chairs to glare up at Scott, his abused foot pulled up to his chest. Scott just gives him a significant look right back.

There’s no way Theo had missed any of the exchange, because he’s neither blind nor an idiot. Scott’s good intentions in preventing Stiles from finishing his question aside, Theo’s wrist twists in Liam’s grip and his pulse starts to hammer harder in Liam’s ears. 

Swallowing a sigh, Liam says, “About that coffee,” and reverses direction without waiting for acknowledgement or permission to start dragging Theo away, back down the hallway towards the stairs. 

The cafeteria is on the first floor but instead Liam guides Theo up, towards the roof. Every few feet like clockwork the slack of Theo’s arm goes taut, like he’s thinking about stopping; about forcing Liam to stop. But he doesn’t, and he also doesn’t _say_ anything, so Liam grits his teeth and starts taking the steps two and then three at a time. It’s possible he’s all but yanking Theo’s arm out of its socket as he does it but them’s the breaks.

Once out on the roof he doesn’t stop by the door. He keeps going, _depressingly_ familiar with its layout for all the wrong reasons—over there is where he’d been dangled off the edge by Sean Walcott, and other there is where he’d been attacked by one of Kate’s Berserkers, and over _there_ is—he forces himself to stop thinking about it. Instead he focuses on dragging Theo over to the fenced-in generator, and pushes him up against the chain links.

“Put your head between your knees if you need to,” he orders, only half joking. 

Theo spends half a second glaring at him, but then he _does it_. He braces both hands wide on his bent knees, and lets his head hang low on a lax neck. His breath shudders loose of his lungs, and the only reason Liam can hear it is because he’s standing right next to Theo. There’s no way the pack can hear it from several floors down and with the dull roar of the generator. 

Grimacing, Liam drops to his haunches so he’s crouching on the balls of his feet, positioned right between Theo’s spread knees so that Liam can look up at him. “Theo, man,” he says softly, a little roughly. “Come on.”

Theo just glares down at him, Liam crouched between his legs looking up. But then his expression twists, and he straightens up just enough that he can put his back to the chain link fence, and start sliding down it. It lacks his usual effortless grace. When he finishes sitting his legs sprawl out messily on either side of Liam’s body, one half-bent and the other mostly straight. He props an elbow up on his bent knee and drops his head into the attached hand. His eyes are a little red.

“Liam,” he says hoarsely. “What if it’s not yours?”

What he means is: _what if it’s mine?_

Liam feels his expression crumple up like a soda can, and he gives up on staying crouched and lets his knees crunch down into the gravel, in between Theo’s spread legs. He rests his hands on the inside of Theo’s knees, an anchor both for himself and for Theo. He _squeezes._

“Theo,” Liam protests quietly. “We talked about this.”

And they _had,_ all three of them. When Hayden had first sat them down in the living room of their cramped little starter house on the outskirts of the Preserve and told them she was _pretty sure_ she was pregnant, and after Liam had _whooped_ and tackled her sideways on the couch in a possibly-too-enthusiastic hug, they’d _had_ to talk about it. Because while Hayden and Liam had been laughing and exchanging breathless ecstatic kisses, Theo had been sitting stock-still, and his complexion had been pasty. 

_Do you know whose it is?,_ he’d asked, forceful enough to almost be a demand. _Hayden, tell me you know whose—_

_No,_ Hayden had cut him off, carefully pushing a too-easily-dislodged Liam aside as she’d sat up—Liam too surprised to put up much resistance, not that he would have—and reached for Theo on the other side of the couch. _No, I have no idea. But, Theo,_ she’d tried, her hands anchoring themselves on either side of his face.

_We should talk to Deaton,_ Theo had interrupted. He’d brought his hands up to grip both of Hayden’s wrists, but while his grip had been white-knuckled it’d also been loose; more of a cage around Hayden’s wrists than a restraint. _We should find out._

But Hayden had just looked at him, silent and solemn and with her eyes searching his face—Liam behind her barely breathing, the emotional whiplash snarling up his thoughts—and then she’d said, very clearly: _No._

“Liam,” Theo says, the same way he’d said _Hayden_ that night: a plea. Liam just moves closer like Hayden had, and presses his forehead against Theo’s just like she had, too. 

“It’s going to be okay, Theo,” Liam promises him, Hayden’s same words that Liam had taken up like a mantra that night and every night since, the both of them constantly pressing it against Theo’s mouth and skin and trembling fingertips.

But Theo just denies, “You don’t _know_ that. What the Doctors did to me, what they did to my _genes—_ ”

“—is _not_ what you are,” Liam cuts him off, and kisses him fiercely when Theo goes to argue again. Theo’s lips move underneath his but not in a kiss, in a _protest,_ and so Liam just kisses him harder; presses in closer. He keeps up both the pressure and the kiss until Theo shudders out another of those shaky breaths, and slumps in his grip. Only then does he pull back, and just enough to declare, “It’s not _who_ you are.”

But Theo just looks back at him through hooded, heavy-lidded eyes. “You don’t know that,” he insists, voice soft and croaking a little and _exhausted_ , because clearly where Hayden and Liam had thought that they’d coaxed him off the proverbial ledge, had talked him around, they _hadn’t,_ and instead he’d just been swallowing all this down for _weeks._

For _months._

“Well,” Liam says, a little blankly because the enormity of Theo’s distress is pressing out all of the oxygen between them. “Well, neither do _you_.”

It feels like a playground retort, an _I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I_ kind of reversal-logic, but the second Liam says it, it lands like truth in his chest. He feels his expression harden. He brings his hands up from Theo’s knees to grip around his face, and yank it up, so Theo’s pinched eyes have to meet Liam’s own.

Liam insists, “ _Neither_ do _you._ ”

“Liam,” Theo stutters.

“ _Theo,_ ” Liam interrupts. He yanks Theo’s head up a little harder. He squeezes his hands a little tighter around Theo’s jaw. “I love you,” he reminds Theo fiercely. “And _Hayden_ loves you, and our pack down in the waiting room loves you, and even if there _is_ something ‘in your genes’—” he makes sure his tone on the last bit reflects all the respect that theory deserves, which is _none at all,_ “—there’s no _way_ it outweighs all of that. Do you understand me?”

Theo stares up at him, open-mouthed and speechless. His breath puffs against Liam’s lips, fast and shallow.

“This baby is going to be _ours,_ ” Liam tells him. “Yours, and mine, and Hayden’s, and—” he adds, his expression going a little dry as he remembers Scott’s face when Scott had turned to Derek and, in all apparent seriousness, had asked: _does this make me some kind of grandfather?_ , “—the pack’s. All of us. And that’s the _only_ part that matters. That’s the only part that’s _ever_ mattered.”

Theo’s expression starts to crumple up. Liam drops his forehead back to Theo’s, his own crumpling in turn. 

“You think you’re the only one who’s terrified?” He confesses hoarsely. “I’m _terrified._ But I already love this kid— _our_ kid—so much that I feel like I’m going to burst apart at the seams with it, so I _know_ we’re going to figure it out. And so, you know,” he concludes, pulling back to look at Theo, to search his eyes, “let’s go find our missing third, and be terrified, and figure it out, together.” He grins, a little wobbly so. “What do you say?”

And Theo doesn’t say anything, but he _does_ bring his hands up to clutch at Liam’s head in turn, and pull him in for a hard, fierce kiss. Liam grins against his mouth.

“Oh good,” Hayden pants out, when they make it back into the room. “I was just about to howl.”

The smile she gives them is a little strained. Liam winces apologetically and hurries over, catching her outstretched hand when she raises it and immediately starting to siphon her pain. The lines of her face smooth as he does, which means that when Theo follows Liam over to the bed to take his place on her other side, Hayden can lean up with a sweaty, serene expression until he bends down to press his forehead to hers as she’d so clearly wanted.

“Hey, you,” she murmurs, and grins softly up at him.

“Hey,” he whispers back. “I’m here,” he promises, and means it as more than being physically present in the room.

“I know,” Hayden replies quietly. “I never had any doubts,” she assures him, and squeezes Liam’s hand in a silent, secret _thanks_. Liam just brings their clasped hands up to his mouth, and presses his lips to her knuckles.

“Alright,” the doctor announces. “Everybody ready? Dads?” She asks, looking from Theo to Liam, Liam tightening his grip on Hayden’s hand and seeing Theo do the same on Hayden’s other side as they prepare to act as Hayden’s supernatural makeshift-epidural. “Mom?” 

Hayden nods, her eyes flashing gold. 

The doctor smiles. “Then here we go.”

When it’s over, Liam takes the prerogative to just collapse down half on top of Hayden with a loud, dramatic groan. It’s half because he actually really is exhausted and half an act meant _directly_ for the way that it makes Hayden laugh, tired and breathy but _genuine,_ her chest and stomach shaking him lightly as she does. But then he bolts _straight_ upright, because—

Because their baby starts to cry.

It’s only for the minute that it takes the doctor and the nurses and Ms. McCall to get her cleaned up, and checked over, but the sound of it hooks deep into every one of Liam’s instincts and _tugs._ Beside him in a row, Hayden and Theo are just as rigid, and just as riveted.

But then the doctor approaches, a little white bundle in her arms, and Liam nearly trips over his own feet trying to move out of the way so that she can lean over, and deposit their daughter in Hayden’s arms. Liam moves back in almost immediately, hovering over Hayden with his shoulder pressed to Hayden’s own and peering down at their daughter. 

Their daughter who peers right back up at them, her eyes briefly glowing a bright, burnished gold.

“Holy shit,” Liam breathes, and then winces when Ms. McCall smacks him up the back of the head, hissing _language, Liam! Your daughter is less than five minutes old._ He flushes even as he’s rubbing at the back of his head, and mutters an apology. The crowd of nurses and the doctor ripples with laughter, and Liam finds himself grinning, his shoulder still pressed to Hayden’s own and his eyes dropping immediately back to his daughter.

And then he sucks a deep breath in as: “Theo,” he realizes, his gaze snapping upward to lock onto Theo’s face. 

But Theo isn’t looking at him. He’s staring down at their daughter, his expression just completely blown open and his body stunned-still. At least it is until he starts to bring a hand up, slow, _slow,_ before he freezes. But Hayden just reaches out to snag it with the hand not cradling their daughter’s weight, and keeps tugging it forward. “C’mon,” she coaxes, and doesn’t stop carefully pulling until Theo’s hand is resting so, so lightly on their daughter’s chest, his fingertips just brushing the curve of her bare cheek. 

She _instantly_ turns into the touch, her eyes flashing again. Theo’s held breath leaves him in an explosive rush, and he crumples a little against the side of Hayden’s bed. 

Hayden just reaches up to hook her hand around the back of his neck, and pull him in so that their foreheads are touching. The second they are she swings that same hand sideways, until she can get a fistful of Liam’s shirt, and pull him down, and in, too. He ends up with his lips pressed to her temple as he laughs quietly, his forehead knocking lightly against Theo’s own. 

In between the triangle-connected set of them, their daughter gazes silently up at all of them, Theo’s fingertips still brushing her cheek.

But it isn’t long before Liam can feel Hayden’s expression go a little dry against his own. “Okay,” she declares. “I think we have to let them in now, or Scott is going to have some kind of excitement-induced cardiac arrest.”

“Well, we are in a hospital,” Ms. McCall points out lightly, but then—once she’s gotten permission from the doctor and nurses, who’d spent the intervening time cleaning up the room—she goes to get her son.

The pack take turns, of course, mostly because that’s what the doctor orders but partially because there’s no way they’d all _fit._ Scott and Malia come through first, and Liam thinks Hayden hadn’t been that far off with that cardiac-arrest comment: Scott looks so excited and so unbelievably happy for them that he looks like he might be on the edge of tears.

Malia just takes one look at their daughter still lying silent and watchful in Theo’s—Theo having taken her, after a panicked moment of wordless conversation between Hayden, Liam, and Theo himself—arms, and bumps her shoulder against Theo’s own. She doesn’t say anything, for which Liam will forever be in her silent debt, but she grins at him, and it’s a small, pleased thing; no sharp edges at all. Theo just flushes, and grins himself, and cradles their daughter a little closer.

But it’s about that time that Stiles starts literally scratching at the door with his nails that he’s a cat trying to get let inside a suburban house’s backdoor, and so Malia rolls her eyes, and grabs Scott by the wrist—still breathlessly ecstatic, and bubbling with it—and dragging him away, towards the door. Stiles pops through almost immediately after she finishes pulling Scott through, followed more sedately by Lydia and Derek.

“Oh my _god,_ ” Stiles exclaims, in a low, hissing whisper. He starts to hurry towards Theo and their daughter, trips over his own momentum, and is rescued by Derek grabbing him by the back of his collar, and hauling him up and back onto his feet. He seems to shrewdly consider this sequence of events—and Hayden’s, Theo’s, and Liam’s matched, raised eyebrows—and then he says, “If I sit in the chair, can I hold her?”

Liam exchanges a look with Hayden who exchanges one with Theo who exchanges the same one back with Liam, but it’s all done specifically for the way that Stiles squawks and says, “Aw, c’mon, please?,” in a desperate tone. Stiles punches the air when he realizes this and practically falls into the chair—Liam sending up a small prayer at the proof they’d already received that their daughter is supernatural—and sits vibrating with barely contained impatience as Theo makes his way over.

“Hey,” Theo says, as he’s bending over to set their daughter carefully in Stiles’ lap, “we never answered your question, earlier.”

Stiles looks up, distracted enough in his excitement to be guileless. “Oh?” He replies absently. “You figure it out?”

“Yeah,” Theo agrees, straightening up and leaving their daughter cradled firmly in Stiles’ arms, Derek behind Stiles as a back-up and giving a small, almost imperceptible nod to Hayden, Liam, and Theo that causes Lydia’s lips to twitch, too. Liam finds himself holding his breath as Theo does it, waiting, _waiting_ to hear Theo’s answer. 

But Theo just glances over his shoulder at Liam, at Hayden; at both of them. His mouth flickers in a small smile.

“Yeah,” he repeats. “She’s ours,” he says, and that small flicker of a smile ignites into a full-on grin.

Stiles scoffs in outrage and starts to complain but Liam barely hears him. He’s too busy grinning back at Theo, Hayden’s hands clasped around one of his own and the scent of their daughter—his, and Theo’s, and Hayden’s, and _theirs_ —all around him. 

\---

Art by [ArtZeppo](https://artzeppo.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/626564728977833984/shepherd-to-the-wolf-said-this-a-home-our-home)!


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